


hum

by sidonay



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Mental Instability, Psychological Horror, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidonay/pseuds/sidonay
Summary: He hates secrets. Doesn’t like people hiding things. But here he is, not telling anybody about it. What could he say? Who could he tell?New symptom. New symptom.If he doesn’t tell anyone, then it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a strange noise: the building settling, the vents thrumming, the chittering of hundreds of teeth percolating through a hole and turning into something else.





	hum

**Author's Note:**

> This is... something. I wanted to write a fic for this show but I had no idea where to even begin. Because honestly... how? For a show this weird already, what could you even come up with? 
> 
> This, apparently. It's sort of an AU, but also not really. It's sort of a horror story but kind of not? I almost considered not posting this but then I figured: "Eh. What the hell." So here it is in all it's off-the-wall, bizarre glory.

There is a phenomenon called The Hum.

It’s called ‘the hum’ because, as a whole, humans aren’t as clever as they tell themselves that they are, fingers on their backs, patting themselves or maybe someone thought it was _ominous_ ; two single-syllable words, when you say it, it’s like hitting a closed fist against an open palm.

( _What is it? What would you call it?_

 _I don't know. It’s just… a hum._ )

The Hum is a persistent, invasive low-frequency noise (it’s a drone— no: a _humming_ , a rumble, a car engine idling just outside, the blades of a fan turning without producing air) that only some people can hear. Only some, a select few. Two-to-four-percent. Clark only knows because he looked it up, clicked the first link he found— the _second_ link he found.

He hates that he did it because that meant that he was _worried_. That he _believed_ what he heard was real, it was _something_.

He could hear it. He _thinks_ he can hear it. There’s something there, deep in his ears. Or maybe in the back of his head.

 _When I wake up in the mornings, I can hear this droning. A sound. I hear a sound._ He types that last part into a search engine but then deletes it. He doesn't want to find his own words echoed back at him. He doesn't want to be like  _those people_. And yet.

It starts when he opens his eyes. There are the too-bright lights. There’s the strange feeling of the fabric against his scarred face even though the doctors had said he wouldn't be able to feel anything there anymore. There’s the sound.

The site he finds has a map. Other people letting the world know: _I hear it too_. He reads their messages in his spare time (what little he has of it) clicking on each little red dot, random, studying the questions and their answers.

 

 **When is the sound the loudest?** _At night. The day. Same day and night._

 **Please describe the sound:** _An idling distant train. Constant buzz. A diesel engine. Like someone blowing into an empty bottle. A wheel turning round and round._

 

( _My dog can hear it._

 _It is unfriendly. I am concerned._ )

 

He hates secrets. Doesn’t like people hiding things. But here he is, not telling anybody about it. What could he say? Who could he tell? _New symptom. New symptom._ If he doesn’t tell anyone, then it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a strange noise: the building settling, the vents thrumming, the chittering of hundreds of teeth percolating through a hole and turning into something else.

It’s the stress getting to him. That was it. David coming back, everything being about _him_. About the Shadow King. Stress manifests in alarmingly different ways. Some people chew their nails. Some lose weight. Lose hair. He hears… a hum.

It’s just stress. He taps the side of his mug, watches with one unclouded eye as the coffee ripples.

Someone walks up to him, tells him something and he’s sure that it’s important. They’re staring down at him and he wants to say: _I told you not to bother me when I’m eating_. He wants to ask: _You hear that?_

Instead, he says: “Got it. Thanks.”

That seems to satisfy them and they leave.

There’s so much going on. So much to _do_ now that their timetable has been moved around by too many fingers, pushed up, rearranged. Even if he _considered_ telling someone it wouldn’t matter. There were more important things going on. More important than a noise that may or may not actually be there.

 

 **Where is it the loudest?** _Main floor. Throughout the house. The basement. Everywhere._

 

It starts in his room and stays there but now it’s everywhere he goes.

 

& & & &

 

This was David’s fault somehow. It had to be. It didn’t matter that this started before he came back. Before he _mysteriously_ came back. (He talked to him, asked him questions, _he tried_ and he knows David is hiding something, he’s not being _honest_ and he hates that he has the gall to be irked about that when he’s burying things of his own but he can’t help it. It’s just who he is. It’s who he’s always been.)

He’ll find a way to blame him because that was easier. It was the simple solution, to lay this on someone else’s head, to _put it_ in someone else’s head. Because, otherwise, what was it?

 

 **Have you tried tracking down the source of the noise?** _With effort. With great effort._

 

(Did David know? Could he feel it? If he could, did that mean that the noise was coming from _inside_ Clark’s head and not anywhere else? If he did, he wasn't saying. But what else was new.)

He could pick apart every square inch of this place but he knows—somehow he just _knows_ —he’d never be able to find it.

( _It’s just stress_ , he says, laughs to himself as he stands in his bathroom and refuses to look at himself in the mirror.)  

At some point, it would be a comfort. He’d miss it, if it were gone. He won’t even notice that it’s there.

He’s not sure if that’s a comforting thought or not.

He reads about the other people, about the thousands who hear it, too, and he blames it on David because it’s uncomplicated.

 _It could be guilt_ , he hears in a familiar, maternal voice. Guilt, like stress, can weigh down on a person, can eat at them in bizarre ways. But he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. It didn’t matter that a voice he couldn’t pinpoint cackled at him when he said that, with a tone that made it clear that it knew he was lying to himself.

He had nothing to feel guilty for.

(Except for pretty much everything.)

 

& & & &

 

“I know it’s you,” Clark says to David as he passes by him in the cafeteria. He’s sitting alone at a table and he looks up at him, eyes wide and then narrowed.

“What?” David asks, sounds genuinely confused but Clark is already walking away. David reaches out with his mind but says the exact same thing: _What?_

So Clark follows suit: _I know it’s you_.

Clark knows, deep down, that it isn’t David. Of course it isn’t. But he has to blame _someone_. And it can’t be himself. It can’t be. Because if it was, that would mean he was going crazy and Clark has been content in knowing that he’s most definitely the sanest person in this building.

He had a million explanations but, simultaneously, not a single one.

 

& & & &

 

He taps his mug and watches as the ripples vibrate in tune with the hum.

“What did you mean, you ‘know it’s me’?” David asks. He sits down. This is all wrong. Clark is usually the one who joins _David_ uninvited. It’s been a day and a half since he said that to him.

This is a tenuous wire he’s balancing on. _It was just a trick. I was messing with you. I was trying to throw you off so you’d answer my questions._ He could just get up and leave. He didn’t have to say anything at all.

“Do you hear that?” Lean forward. Keep his voice low. David mimics his movements and Clark wonders if he's aware that he's doing it.

“Hear what?”

Clark lets the question hang there. _This is your fault_ , he should say even though it’s not true.

“What’re you hearing?”

What makes it worse is that he genuinely seems curious. He wants to know. The fact that he’s asking, though, means that he _can’t_ hear it and that leaves a ball of ice in the pit of his stomach.

It’s him. It’s _only him_.

“What is it?”

He wished that he knew.

 

& & & &

 

There is a phenomenon called The Hum.

A lot of people hear it and now Clark hears it too and, much like his scars or the David-shaped thorn in his side, it’s permanent. Pervasive. Intrusive.

It layers under the chattering of teeth. The whine of the PA system.

It’s there. There it is. There it will be.

( _You still hearing that thing?_ David asks. 'That thing'. He's sympathetic. Of course he is.

 _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ , Clark lies.)

 

& & & &

 

 **Does the sound ever stop? Please tell us about this:** _No. No. I don’t know. Sometimes but then it comes back. It's always there._

_It's always there._

**Author's Note:**

> 'The Hum' is [a real phenomena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum). [The site](http://www.thehum.info/) that is mentioned in the fic is also real. The bolded questions that show up throughout the fic were taken from there, as were a handful of the answers.


End file.
